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We can conclude that the Dughwede calendar lasts for two seasonal years, marked by the bull festival as a culminating and turning point. All ritual and agricultural activities are interlinked and need to be seen comprehensively together with the social and cosmological order to understand the underlying cultural pattern. The year is dramatized throughout the seasons to keep the communication between the natural and spiritual forces, both creatively reflected in the individual person. The traditional world was kept in balance as a functional equilibrium over a period of time not known to us, but is now moving towards a process of transformation initiated by structural historical change. The first step towards change is the change of moral values which affects possibly first individuals and then groups. This encourages them to give up the traditional way of interacting with their environment. This process can be described as secularisation and leads to another quality of relationship between man and his natural environment. The same process can also be described as socio-economic change.

The Way of the Beer analyses how Mafa re-enact their history in the ritual transfer of sorghum beer from junior to senior members of their society. Beer is the ‘Eucharist’ of Mafa religion, standing for the linkage between God, the ancestors, the fertility of the living and the agricultural land. The ritual sequences in which beer is exchanged and offered at family and community shrines are an encoding of settlement history. The CD-ROM version of the "Way of the Beer" not only contains everything found in the printed version of this work, but also a digital map (figure 8) whichis too large to be printed. The key to the digital map (figure 9) is electronically linked to the map. Please note that figure 9 is displayed when the option "key", found under each ward name (in the bookmark section of figure 8), is activated. If this is done for the first time, figure 8 needs to be brought up again in order to be tiled next to figure 9. However, the best option for exploring the map is to print out the key. Please refer to "The Way of the Beer"(pages 142-144) for further information on how the large digital map needs to be read. The text, maps and images can be viewed in Word (please install the linguistic fonts before using the Word version) or Acrobat Reader (version 4.0 has beencopied on to the CD-ROM). The CD-ROM also contains version 1.03 of the Northern Mandaras Homepage which must be viewed with Microsoft Explorer. The CD-ROM is organised in five main folders which are labelled "Text", "Figures", "Tables", "Plates" and "Homepage". Each folder contains a Word 97 as well as an Adobe Acrobat version of "The Way of the Beer". It is only the large digital map which does not exist as a Word but only as an Adobe Acrobat version. The page numbering apart from figure 8) continues through the sections, beginning with the text and ending with the plates.